“We should have been knocking on the door and we haven’t and I have no excuses, it starts here,” Jones said on a Tuesday interview on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas. “But we have not, and I know that to the extent that we have a healthy Romo, our best chance to get back there right now, our best chance to get in the Super Bowl is a healthy Romo.”

Dallas made the playoffs in three of those four seasons, but couldn’t advance past the divisional round. The only playoff win in that span came in 2009, when the Cowboys trounced the Eagles in the wild-card round 34-14 for their first playoff win since the 1996 season. However, they were blown out by the Vikings in the divisional round 34-3, and haven’t reached the playoffs since.

“Now, for us not to have gotten it done during those years is a mess up,” Jones said. “You’ve got to get it when you’re high like that, when you’re high up on it. I think that you can miss your bus when you’ve got your quarterback and you’ve got good talent around him.

“And if you miss that bus in the NFL, then you’re going to have to adjust back down on your cap, because in order to get that talent and pay it and keep it at that level, you’re going to have to push that cap. Then when you don’t get there, those players can age on you. Their actual skills diminish, as well as your ammo basically goes down because you’re having to pay the fiddler for spending on the credit under your cap. All of that boils down to management.

“When I look back on it, we probably paid some people that we probably would’ve been better off not paying.”